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State substance abuse management information systems increasingly are becoming important tools for research, program management, and policy formulation at federal and state levels. These systems are currently undergoing radical expansion, leading to the creation of statewide performance and outcome monitoring systems for publicly-funded substance abuse treatment. This expansion makes imperative increased knowledge of the psychometric properties of the data in these systems. This study develops a method for examining the reliability of such data and applies it to the Massachusetts Substance Abuse Management Information System (SAMIS). Cohen's [kappa], intraclass correlations, and the techniques of Heise (1969) are used to assess the reliability of different types of variables. Results show that key variables on the SAMIS Admission Form exhibit moderate to high reliability, supporting the use of this data for aggregate analyses. At the same time, caution should be used in making judgments about individual patients. Keywords: reliability; substance abuse; substance abuse treatment; drug treatment; alcohol treatment; management information system; administrative data; assessment; three-wave panel data

The Individual Group Member Interpersonal Process Scale (IGIPS) was applied to videotapes of the first four sessions of seven 15-session outpatient therapy groups in the Mental Health Department of a health maintenance organization. The IGIPS is a newly designed scale to estimate patient behavior in group psychotherapy, and encompasses significant aspects of the mechanism by which patients behave in a group and react to the other members of the group. The scale consisted of Psychological Mindedness, Self-Fours, Comfort with Self, Interpersonal Sensitivity and Activity.